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SFFWorld News – 12/14/08
(2008-12-15)
SFFWorld News – 12/14/08
1) Josh Schwartz, best known for the television series Gossip Girl, has been hired by Twentieth Century Fox to direct the next X-Men spin-off movie, X-Men: First Class, about the students of Professor Xavier’s school. The movie will offer previous glimpsed and new younger characters from the Marvel Comics X-Men universe. First up, however, is Hugh Jackman returning in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, starring also Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, who may get his own spin-off film. A Magneto movie is also in the works, though it has been temporarily delayed.
2) ABC network in the U.S. has cancelled the Emmy Award-praised fantasy series Pushing Daisies. The series, produced and created by Bryan Fuller, has shot 13 episodes for its second season, ending with a cliffhanger, which ABC plans to air. Pushing Daisies was one of the series that was put on hiatus in the wake of the writers’ strike earlier in the year, and not brought back till fall, many months later. Like other such series, Daisies suffered a drop in ratings from the move from which it has not recovered, despite wide critical acclaim and a cult following. DC Comics may introduce a comics series to continue Daisies’ storylines and a possible movie or t.v. movie might develop in the future. In the meantime, Fuller will be returning to his previous writing gig on the ailing superhero show Heroes, and has a two-year development deal for new series with NBC/Universal.
3) Brenda Cooper’s The Silver Ship and the Sea, published by Tor Books, is the winner of the 2008 Endeavour Award, which honors a work of SFF by a writer living in the Pacific Northwest. The award was announced at OryCon, in Oregon, and comes with a $1,000 honorarium.
4) SFF author Ellen Kushner’s fantasy picture book, The Golden Dreydl, has been turned into a theater adaptation called The Klezmer Nutcracker. The play is running at the Vital Theatre on Broadway in New York City. For more information, contact: http://www.vitaltheatre.org/2008Klezmer.php
5) Legendary SFF figure Forrest J. Ackerman passed away in Los Angeles from heart failure after a long illness at the age of 92. Ackerman devoted his life to SFF literature and film and was widely credited with coining the term “sci-fi.” He founded the renowned magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland in 1958 and edited it for twenty-five years. He also built a major private collection of SF movie and literary memorabilia which he opened to the public once a week. Ackerman met the author Ray Bradbury when Bradbury was a teenager and gave him money to start his own magazine Futuria Fantasia and introductions to publishers. Ackerman became a literary agent and represented Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and other SFF authors. Ackerman occasionally appeared in bit parts in films such as Dracula vs. Frankenstein and Amazon Women on the Moon. His last acting role was in 2007’s The Dead Undead. Ackerman was also an author, writing numerous SFF short stories, sometimes in collaboration or under a pseudonym, and he published several works of non-fiction about SFF writing and film. He was awarded the Bram Stoker Award for lifetime achievement.
6) Tarzan and his loincloth are coming back to the big screen. The iconic character from the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs will be the subject of a film directed by Stephen Sommers (The Mummy) from a script by Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean.) The movie is expected to have a lot of action sequences and to concentrate on the adult Tarzan.
7) Twentieth Century Fox has optioned the film rights to Adena Halpern’s fantasy novel The Ten Best Days of my Life as a vehicle for actress Amy Adams. Adams will play a woman who dies and goes to heaven but may be demoted to a lower level of paradise unless she can justify herself by recounting her 10 best days. Adams will also be producing the film, along with 21 Laps Productions. Adams also will be appearing as Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, due out from Fox next summer.
8) Animated sci-fi series Futurama, about a pizza delivery guy who wakes up 1,000 years in the future after accidentally freezing himself, is putting out a fourth DVD movie Into the Wild Green Yonder, due out in February 2009 from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. The new movie guest-stars the voices of Penn Jillette, Snoop Dogg, Phil Hendrie and Seth MacFarlane, and will reveal the truth about “Number 9 Man,” a mysterious character from the early days of the series.
9) French director Pascal Laugier will helm Paramount Vantage’s horror thriller Details, based on a short story by China Mieville. Details concerns the disappearance of a young girl due to supernatural forces hidden away in the random patterns of everyday objects, and her father’s attempts to find her.
10) Director Peter Segal (Get Smart) will helm the newest film adaptation of DC Comics’ Captain Marvel for Warner Brothers from a script by John August. Teenager Billy Batson is recruited by the wizard Shazam to become an adult superhero whenever he utters the wizard’s name, endowed with the powers of six mythic figures. The popular character, over sixty-years-old, has been the subject of a radio show, animated and live-action television series, and several films.
11) After bringing Twilight, the adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s popular vampire novel, to big box office numbers, director Catherine Hardwicke will not be guiding the sequel film New Moon. Hardwicke and studio Summit Entertainment were not able to come to an agreement on money, script and scheduling for the sequel, so Hardwicke stepped down. Chris Weitz will direct the new movie, with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart reprising their starring roles, for release in early 2010.
12) Night Shade Books has joined up with SFF fiction magazine Electric Velocipede to promote the magazine to a wider audience. New and renewing subscribers who sign up for one year subscriptions to the magazine will have a choice of free Night Shade book titles with their order. For more information, contact: http://www.nightshadebooks.com/2008/12/05/night-shade-books-announces-new-partnership-with-electric-velocipede/
13) The Golden Globe Awards nominations were announced and are largely short of SFF nods. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button got nominations for Best Motion Picture, Drama, Best Actor Performance for Brad Pitt, Best Director for David Fincher, and Best Screenplay for Eric Roth. The late Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination. SFF films took over the Best Animated Feature Film category with nominations for Bolt (Disney,) Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks,) and WALL-E (Pixar/Disney.) In television, HBO’s True Blood, based on the novels by Charlaine Harris, received a nomination for Best Television Series, Drama, and its star Anna Paquin received a nomination for Best Performance, Actress.
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